Not an Outraged Generation: White Student Liberals and Limited Integration at the University of Texas at Austin, 1946–1960

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• Not an Outraged Generation:White Student Liberals and Limited Integration at the University of Texas at Austin, 1946–1960
• John A. Moretta (bio)

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Representatives from University of Texas student organizations listen to an unidentified man speak on the Marion Heman Sweatt case in November 1946. ND-46-262-01, Neel Douglass Photography Collection, Austin History Center, Austin Public Library.

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In early 1944, Regent Orville Bullington defiantly declared that "there is not the slightest danger of any negro attending the University of Texas, regardless of what Franklin D, Eleanor, or the Supreme Court says, so long as you have a Board of Regents with as much intestinal fortitude as the present one."¹ At the same time that Bullington expressed such certainty to a colleague, some University of Texas (UT) students in Austin were expressing the opposite view, and they were just as unequivocal as Bullington in their belief that it was time for the university to live up to its mantra of being "a university of the first class" by opening its doors to all students on an equal basis, regardless of the color of their skin. As Daily Texan editor Bob Owens declared in 1943, "If we are to win the peace, we must first erase all traces of fascism in this country. Our prejudices, our hatreds, our fascistic idea of racial superiority, must be forgotten if we are to build out of this war a nation 'of the people, by the [End Page 243] people, and for the people.' Freedom and democracy should be for all, regardless of race, color, or creed."²

Owens's powerful words were a preview of the postwar years on the Forty Acres, as was Bullington's intransigence. As the United States defeated fascism in Europe, some UT students continued the fight against racism at home. According to the Daily Texan, it was time "for the South's largest university to become an example, a leader, in the cause for Negro equality. The success or failure of the University in this matter can raise to the highest pinnacles or plunge to the lowest depth the hopes and aspirations of the entire Negro population of the United States." As one student declared in 1946, "I advocate opening the doors of every school and college of the University to any person, be he black, or white or bright purple," and in 1948 the Daily Texan "put [its] position very plainly: Equality for the Negro Race Cannot be Deferred Forever … The printed text of our Constitution rings out against discrimination, and yet it is far from reality… the Negro should be granted full equality, or the Constitution amended. We think he should be given full equality." For UT's White civil rights supporters, segregation, and racism in general, had put American democracy, and the American creed, on trial on the world stage; if both were to remain credible, integration must occur or else "our ideal is an empty platitude which we, with our petty fears and out little minds, will destroy."³

During the admission of Houston postal worker Marion Heman Sweatt to the university's law school in 1950, the acceptance of African Americans to its professional schools beginning in 1954, the admission of Black undergraduates in 1956, the controversy over Barbara Smith a year later, and the attempted integration of campus housing, athletics, and local businesses, increasing numbers of White students embraced the integration of the university and the city of Austin. However, beginning with the Sweatt case, and reaching a crescendo of race-baiting during the Smith controversy in 1957, a persistent, racist-driven backlash emerged in the UT community, not only among administrators, politicians, and alumni, but also many current students, all of whom wanted to keep UT a White university.

In many respects, UT's White student support for integration and civil rights for African Americans in the postwar years reflected the expansion of the legacy of dissent and New Deal liberalism that first appeared on the Forty Acres during the 1930s. Indeed, UT became a rarity in the postwar years: a southern university with a historical...